at this imaginary starting line
by recycled-stars
Summary: Post-ep for Cops & Robbers. The end of a hell of a day is quiet after all the chaos.


**at this imaginary starting line**  
><span>Author's Notes:<span> Why is this episode so inspiring? Post-ep for _Cops & Robbers_. Honestly, it has _no_ point except Castle and Beckett were drinking wine with his family and I think everybody wanted to see more of _that_. Not to mention that I wanted to hear the finer details of Castle's scoring system. (Snort, not actually a euphemism.)

(_B_, you reviewed anonymously so I couldn't reply. Sorry for spoiling you! I didn't even think to point out that there are spoilers for _Heat Rises_ because I actually haven't read it myself! I've based the conversation here on other people's comments, but fair call, they are a tad spoilery.)

Title from the (gorgeous & oddly appropriate) _Accidental Light _by Sleeping At Last. I highly recommend YouTubing it.

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><p>The end of a hell of a day is quiet after all the chaos.<p>

After dinner, when they're alone and the conversation slows, she realises he never finished espousing on all the times he's allegedly saved her life. She pours the last of the bottle of wine into his glass and joins him at the window, staring out over the thick of it, city lights and a busy city below. The noise is muted though like they are, subdued movements, sparse words.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, almost a whisper, as she hands him the glass, fingers lingering against his. It sends quiet tremors through her, a kind of desire she's never felt before, more centred on an ache in her chest than an ache between her legs. (Though there's that too, but it's less important, less urgent, especially tonight when she's just so grateful that they have this time to go slowly, to take pause.)

He meets her eyes in the glass, smiling at the picture they make. "Nothing important. Just... remembering how lucky I am."

She can barely keep herself from beaming. Her lips remained pursed but her cheekbones lift with it, and her eyes are bright like they have been all night. "Not everyone might see it that way. You walked into a bank heist. That doesn't happen to many people. Some people might say you were very _unlucky_."

"No." He shakes his head. "Nobody got hurt. The mastermind is behind bars. My mother and my daughter are safe. I've finally convinced my partner to drink my wine," he grins at her. "Couldn't have written a better ending myself."

"Well you don't always give your characters such happy endings," she observes, twisting the stem of her empty glass between her fingers. She's referring to the latest _Nikki Heat _of course, with the ending that was so physically difficult to read that it took her all summer to get through the press copy her father forwarded to her.

"Well," he shrugged. "You know as well as I do that sometimes life doesn't end happily. But we need that, to remind us of our good fortune when it does. If you're talking about Derek Storm, I think it's how he would've wanted to go. Walking frames and false teeth would've been a much harsher sentence. If you're talking about Nikki and Rook-" he pauses to study her reaction. "Well. That's not the end for them, just a pause. I think they work it out eventually." _Here's to life imitating art_, he adds, silently.

"I have to say Castle, I'm impressed. I never would have pegged you for the kind of guy to come home and count his blessings."

"Plentiful though they may be. No, believe me, I'm not always so good. We all have our capacity for self-pity Beckett. Mine is probably greater than most. Just, not today."

She hums her answer and raises her glass to her lips, catching the last drops of Oregon pinot her tongue.

They're standing elbow-to-elbow at the window. She nudges him.

"So, you never finished your list before, of the nine times you've saved my life. You never got to the ninth."

His smile, firmly in place since she untied his wrists, fades. "Beckett."

"What?" she blinks, unsure of what she's said that warrants such a serious look but then it dawns on her. The ninth time was the cemetery, was him pushing her out of the way of a sniper moments too late. "Oh."

"I suppose I shouldn't really count it, since it was more of an attempt than an actual rescue." It's full of wry humour which she usually appreciates, but she can't bring herself to actually be amused. She raises her hand to her sternum, unconsciously, aware than the ache there is psychosomatic but momentarily breathless at the memory just the same.

When she recovers, she turns to him, reaches over and curls her fingers around his elbow. "Hey. Don't go back there," she urges.

"How could I not?" he says quietly. "I know you don't remember, but trust me, I'll never forget."

"I'm sure." She should tell him what she _does_ remember. Every time she inadvertently adds to the lie, the guilt grows. (This is _definitely_ going to spill out with the shrink. She only hopes the doctor will cut to the heart of it and offer some wisdom, in his matter-of-fact but professional way.) "I'm sorry Castle," she squeezes his arm. _I'm sorry for being a coward. I'm sorry I'm a liar. I'm sorry I got shot. I'm sorry I can't say that I love you yet. I'm sorry I can't apologise for going after my mother's killer with everything in me. I'm sorry that I never will. Please don't make me choose between solving the case and you._He thinks she's apologising for a lot less.

"It was hardly your fault."

"No but. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you after. I'm sorry that I never really appreciated how hard it must've been for you until I read the book. And today."

"I suppose I can't blame you."

"But you do," she states it like a fact.

(It's unlike them. Confrontation, addressing the inevitable hurts, has never been part of this partnership. They say out loud what they have to, and let the looks and small gestures do the rest. But he started something that night in her apartment, before Montgomery, before the sniper. He started to let out all the words, and ever since she's found herself writing volumes of her own, finding it difficult not to share them. Maybe this is a difficult but necessary step towards what she's only barely admitted to herself that she wants.)

"Only part of me does." He says it gently, but it still stings, leaves its mark.

She sighs. Before her mother died, she had never believed in wanting to erase the past. It made you what you were, and she'd always been proud of that. But there are certain things in life that are irrevocable, that change you in ways you don't like. And after, she realised why people wanted to go back. Most of the time, she doesn't dwell on her regrets, but sometimes, late at night or after too much wine, it hits her; the paralysing, all-consuming wish to walk back through her memories, to a moment past. She smooths her thumb along his forearm, just below where his sleeves are rolled, like she's smudging away all that history. If she can't expunge it, maybe she can rub over it until it fades.

"I wish-" she begins, but the rest of the sentence doesn't follow in turn. Her tongue is heavy with it. "I don't know. I'm sorry, that it hurt you, but I needed that time. I was a wreck, still am, suppose I have been for a long time."

"I don't believe that."

She smiles, at him, for him, and he always knows that it's a gift. "Well that's sweet of you to say Castle, but you don't know the half of it."

"So let me," he says, simply. Maybe that's the liquid courage. "You have to know by now that I'm not going anywhere."

"I do."

"And yet."

"I'm not good at needing people Castle. That doesn't mean I don't."

"I know. I wasn't always sure that you knew."

She bites her lip. "Maybe I didn't. But I've known for a while that I need you. I'm so ... I can't tell you how glad I was, to see you all alive in that bank."

"You and me both." He reaches out and tugs at the corner of her lip with his thumb, smoothing her frown. The lines on her forehead relax. "To all of it. And Beckett, just because I can't forget it, doesn't mean I haven't forgiven you for it."

She nods. "Okay."

He reaches out and takes her glass from her. "Besides, you've forgiven me my fair share of thoughtlessness. And I've never had any excuse."

Beckett laughs, just once, at that.

"It's late," she says as she watches him load the glasses into the dishwasher. "As much as I don't want to leave, I'm a day behind on that paperwork now."

Her eyes widen, just slightly, realising that what she's said sounds like an opening for him to ask her to stay. Castle doesn't even think of it, for once. "Hang on. I'll walk you down."

She rolls her eyes at his chivalry. "Don't be ridiculous. Who are you going to save me from anyway?"

"Hey," he points out, "Don't forget whose ahead in this life-saving business."

"I'd say, if we don't count your last appreciated but nonetheless ineffective attempt," she counters, "Then we're even."

"Hmm." (She knows, at that, that he's going to concede.) "While I resent you altering the score to suit your purposes, I do like the symbolism. I'll allow it."

At the door, he hugs her, buries his face in her hair. His clavicle is hard beneath her nose, almost uncomfortable, but she feels herself rest, stop, forget all the baggage they're carrying. She feels her heart beating in her chest and feels him breathing against her body, imagining that she's conscious of every movement of her body, of all the chemical reactions that allow her to be here in this moment and of all the ones that have throughout time, from the ever expanding universe to the microscopic oxygen diffusing into her lungs. It's slow, steady.

This is the natural order of things.

He releases her but his hand remains curled in the ends of her hair. "Sorry."

She shakes her head. "No. Why?"

Castle smiles at that."I'll see you in the morning."

"Even if we don't have a case?" She answers his grin with one of her own. These days she finds his joy infectious, equal to her own at seeing it.

"Maybe it's about time I started learning about paperwork," he says, his words measured. "After all, it wouldn't be fair to the readers to gloss over the less glamorous end of police work."

"Mmm," she nods.

They share a knowing look and he holds open the door for her. She steps into the hall but lingers, not wanting to leave. Her fingers curl around the door knob.

"Night," he says.

She's staring and she knows it. "Until tomorrow Castle."

When she closes the door and leans against it, she hugs herself. _Lucky_, she thinks, he called them lucky. It's not all easy, she knows that. _Miles to go before we sleep_. If anything, their conversation that opened old wounds reminds her of that. But they're not stuck at the beginning either. It's the close of a chapter and they're barely halfway through the book.

They have time before they write the ending.

And whatever else, she knows they'll do it together.


End file.
